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A lazy day planned for today. Roomie will be off to get pizza and wings soon, and then we'll be in to enjoy the beautiful day before the rains return on Monday. I still have to post Chapter 15 of the fic no one's reading, but beyond that, the day is my own, and I plan to read and otherwise vegetate.
I finished Dopesick by Beth Macy last night, and I find myself ambivalent about it. Both the U.S. government and the pharmaceutical companies have turned a blind eye to the rampant epidemic of opiate addiction for too long, content to demonized marginalized people and reap massive profits from unnecessary prescriptions, but I find it hard to sympathize with those who had no need of the pills in the first place and took them anyway because it was the cool thing to do. My cousin, for instance, was not in pain when he popped his first Oxy; he was a dumbass, entitled kid who thought it would be fun, and before he knew it, he was nodding off in his breakfast and stealing from his family and has been in and out of rehab and jail for the past ten years. He had every advantage in life and squandered it for a pill, and I am hard pressed to shed any tears for him. Yes, I know addiction alters brain chemistry once it takes hold and essentially hijacks a person's willpower, but no one made my cousin pop that first pill. He wasn't sick or in pain and following a doctor's orders. He was an idiot chasing a good time.
So while it was fascinating to trace the history of the marketing of these drugs and the relentless spread of the epidemic from the forgotten hollows of Appalachia to the affluent, white suburbs, and read the accounts of the people trying to help the addicts save themselves, it was soul-sucking to read account after account of people who chose to do this to themselves and refused all offers of help because it was easier to stay in the hell you know.
I finished Dopesick by Beth Macy last night, and I find myself ambivalent about it. Both the U.S. government and the pharmaceutical companies have turned a blind eye to the rampant epidemic of opiate addiction for too long, content to demonized marginalized people and reap massive profits from unnecessary prescriptions, but I find it hard to sympathize with those who had no need of the pills in the first place and took them anyway because it was the cool thing to do. My cousin, for instance, was not in pain when he popped his first Oxy; he was a dumbass, entitled kid who thought it would be fun, and before he knew it, he was nodding off in his breakfast and stealing from his family and has been in and out of rehab and jail for the past ten years. He had every advantage in life and squandered it for a pill, and I am hard pressed to shed any tears for him. Yes, I know addiction alters brain chemistry once it takes hold and essentially hijacks a person's willpower, but no one made my cousin pop that first pill. He wasn't sick or in pain and following a doctor's orders. He was an idiot chasing a good time.
So while it was fascinating to trace the history of the marketing of these drugs and the relentless spread of the epidemic from the forgotten hollows of Appalachia to the affluent, white suburbs, and read the accounts of the people trying to help the addicts save themselves, it was soul-sucking to read account after account of people who chose to do this to themselves and refused all offers of help because it was easier to stay in the hell you know.
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